I really love and appreciate all the UI updates in H22 — it feels like a really nice step forward.

But… I do find a lot of the new icons look far too similar to each other.

For me, icons need to prioritise functionality and recognisability over looking good. When several icons have very similar shapes/visual language, I find myself having to stop and read the tooltip rather than being able to identify what I need at a glance.

Maybe it’s just something I need to get used to, but I’m curious if anyone else feels the same?

I totally feel the same about the new icons, everything looks the same now and I have to really stop and check what I'm clicking on.
The node graph color swatch icon is a perfect example. It went from a grid of differently colored squares to dots of different shades of the same color. Not representative of it's function at all.

Just gonna echo what you said: icons need to prioritize functionality and recognizability over looking good

I'm forcing myself to use the new UI only because the legacy one won't be around forever. I appreciate the move to Qt and such but it's not a cardinal sin to look different than Blender.

I totally agree with the OP.

For a program at the pinnacle of the visual effects world, there seems to be a surprising lack of understanding / skill / resource applied to areas such as icon design. At the H22 launch when Cristin introduced the new interface work, he passed a comment about it being much more than '...some new icons, oh la la...'. Clearly there has been a huge amount of work on the interface technology and backend - and I'm sure we all appreciate that, but comments such as that seem to reveal a real lack of appreciation of the importance of UI design.

The fact is it's those icons that form a significant part of access to the software. There seems little consistency in design language, and a major lack of awareness of scale. UI icons need to be legible and readable at very small sizes - and many of them aren't.

It's great to see the development of the foundations of the new UI in H22, and as those have come into place I really hope Sidefx will put more emphasis on the refinement of the UI - including those 'oh la la' icons.

Sadly I agree. Subtle shading and fine lines in icons don't translate well when they are small. Increasing the Global UI Contrast to 2 helps.